…or, to bafflingly quote an entirely different cult property, Who is Number One?
I’m in a quandary. It’s something trivial and unimportant, so naturally it’s occupying my thoughts to an absurd degree. It is in fact the Doctor Who Magazine’s 60th anniversary survey, looking to rank Doctor Who’s entire TV output from worst to City of Death.
This isn’t the first time. If there’s one thing Doctor Who fans love more than Doctor Who, it’s LISTS about Doctor Who, and we certainly haven’t gone fifty-nine-and-a-half years without thinking of rating each story. But it’s a slightly different process this time, which is interesting. Rather than tackling all three hundred in one go, a preliminary round has ranked each Doctor’s output. From this ‘first cut’ the top three per Doctor have gone through to (which is where we are now) the final.
So in a sense a lot of the heavy lifting is already done and we’re left with just thirty-seven stories. I can sort of see the logic behind it, it means that in the final countdown every Doctor will be represented, which is nice. On the other hand if, say, you happen to think Tom Baker’s fourth best story is also the eighth best story EVER – tough, it’s already out of the running.
To be honest, therefore, the final ‘1 to 37’ list is already contentious for that very reason. But then, it’s not really about reaching that rare beast, the definitive answer. The main purpose, I suspect, is to give us something to endlessly debate and dispute for the next decade-and-a-half until DWM’s 75th Anniversary Poll rolls around.
As ever my problem, my opening quandary, is how should I choose? Are we looking for the ‘best’ story, or the one that is most people’s ‘favourite’? In other words, how should a story be judged? Is it a mix of the quality of its script, the direction, the performances, the incidental score… or is it just the far-more subjective, “I really like it”?
If a story has a good script, good direction, good acting, is that enough? Does it actually matter whether or not it’s entertaining? I mean, take James Joyce’s Ulysses. It’s generally accepted as a literary masterpiece, but I’ve only ever heard it referred to in sentences such as “I’ve finally managed to finish…” or “I’m afraid I’ve been defeated by…” Nobody has EVER said, “loved it, what a page-turner!” (Me, I’ve never even bothered, I’m going to wait for the movie.)
In the earlier rounds I tried my best to be fair – so, good news for The Caves of Androzani which is objectively superb but which I’ve never really warmed to. Now we’re into the final furlong though, and I sort of feel (in a wishy-washy “you’re all winners” kind of way) that we can take as read that these final thirty-seven are all a bit tasty. So the only way I can really separate them, rightly or wrongly is, well, the enjoyment factor.
On that basis, and bearing in mind we can vote for five stories, I’ve whittled it down from thirty-seven to thirteen.
It would be tactless of me to say which stories I don’t enjoy so much, so I won’t specify which twelve-part Dalek epic I’m not voting for, and will similarly keep shtoom on which of the ‘Doctor meets sunflower-painting Dutch artist’ stories doesn’t delight me.
I will say though, which is partly what has prompted this navel gazing, that at the moment Paul McGann’s movie-length outing is looking like it’s very likely going to get my vote. I accept that the story is a bit ropey, that there’s some twaddle about the Doctor being half-human which is there solely to try and help the plot hang together, and that the resolution is baffling to say the least (twenty-seven years on and I’m still not really sure what a temporal orbit is). However, and despite all that, I love it more every time I watch it.
Which rather sums up the whole show in fact: it’s a load of nonsense, but I love it.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 